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Dessert

French Fritters

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, and spices is fried, pounded, and then fried again to make small, sweet fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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French Fritters

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

French Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the beaten eggs with enough milk and flour to make a thick pancake batter.

  2. Fry the batter in a hot pan until pale.

  3. Pound the cooked batter in a mortar until smooth.

  4. Add the yolks and whites of the eggs, orange-flower water, almond paste, sugar, and nutmeg to the batter. Pound until it becomes a smooth batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a large stewpan half full of fine lard until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard, the size of large nuts.

  3. Turn the fritters as they brown.

  4. Once cooked, remove them onto clean paper in a dish.

  5. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and, with the extra yolks and whites, add structure and richness to the fritters.
Flour
Forms the thick batter base that gives the fritters their body.
Blanched almonds
Add fat and a nutty flavour, and body to the batter once beaten to a paste.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown as they fry.
Fine lard
Conducts heat for frying, crisping the outside while the inside stays tender.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters soak up fat and turn greasy, while overly hot fat browns the outside before the centre sets. Keep the fat steadily hot and fry in small batches.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, almond, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, almond, sugar, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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